1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a soldering module for a soldering system for selective wave soldering, having at least one first and one second solder pot, wherein the solder pots are displaceable along an x-axis by means of an x-axis drive, along a y-axis by means of a y-axis drive, and along a z-axis by means of a z-axis drive, wherein the axes are all arranged orthogonally in relation to each other.
2. Description of Related Art
In the field of bonding electronic components which, for example, are attached using through hole technology (THT)—from a top side of a printed circuit board through a hole in the printed circuit board—it is known to bond the components from a bottom side of the printed circuit board.
What is known as selective wave soldering has become known for bonding individual pins or series of pins by soldering, in which an assembly or a pin to be bonded is positioned precisely over a standing wave of a liquid solder. In what is known as fluxing, it is furthermore known to first spray a flux with a spray nozzle onto the pins/pin series to be soldered to improve wetting by the solder, wherein individual pins are then soldered by what is known as point soldering, or pin series are soldered by traveling along a path from the first to the last pin of the pin series.
For example, it is known to position a printed circuit board—using a positioning device—precisely over a standing wave of a solder pot arranged statically in a soldering system, and then if applicable to lower the printed circuit board for point soldering until the standing wave of the solder contacts the pin. In this case, the entire printed circuit board is accordingly moved relative to the standing wave generated in the static solder pot. However, such a procedure has proved to be comparatively time-consuming.
Soldering modules for a soldering system for selective wave soldering, having at least one first and one second solder pot (14, 18), wherein the solder pots are displaceable along an x-axis by means of an x-axis drive (34), along a y-axis by means of a y-axis drive (26, 28), and along a z-axis by means of a z-axis drive (38, 40), wherein the axes are all arranged orthogonally in relation to each other are furthermore known from the prior art, wherein the solder pot can be moved in the direction of the x-axis, the y-axis and Z-axis relative to a printed circuit board to be processed that is statically arranged during processing. However according to the prior art it is only possible to move both solder pots in sync with each other since both solder pots are moved in the direction of the y-axis by a common y-axis drive, and hence also only a common movement of the solder pots in the direction of the x-axis is feasible. From the prior art, it is therefore only known to move to the solder pots independently of each other in the direction of a z-axis, i.e. toward the printed circuit board to be processed or away from the printed circuit board to be processed. The two solder pots are therefore always moved in sync along the x-axis and y-axis, i.e. in a plane parallel to a printed circuit board to be processed.
When processing printed circuit board panels, i.e. complete printed circuit boards that consist of individual printed circuit boards that have (for example) a plurality of identical circuit functions with the same design but that have not yet been individualized, it has been shown that a processing of printed circuit board panels using pots moved in sync is undesirable, in particular when the individual printed circuit boards are oriented differently.